Thank you for that background on the Bronx Women’s Maternity Hospital. It’s very interesting. I couldn’t find anything about this outbreak either, but I was told about this by my mother. I wish, I wish I could remember what happened.

Barbara

>>> “Steven S” <sanitized email> 02/20/05 >>>

Bronx Maternity and Woman’s Hospital opened in 1920 in a new building at the northeast corner of Grand Concourse (#1072) & 166th Street.

Bronx Maternity Hospital (the original name) was chartered in 1914, with the intention of constructing a building in the Hunt’s Point section of the Bronx. The hospital’s founders were Jewish, and wanted to serve a densely populated Jewish community in the South Bronx.

By 1933, the hospital was using the longer name. In 1950, the Bronx Maternity & Woman’s Hospital closed, upon merging with the Jewish Memorial Hospital in northern Manhattan. The Bronx facility had become outmoded. It was sold after the merger, and became a nursing home. Jewish Memorial Hospital, in turn, went bankrupt in 1983, and closed after 78 years of service.

Research in The New York Times doesn’t reveal information about an epidemic around 1941. However, in 1942, a nurse at the hospital was sentenced to manslaughter, for killing a 20-hour-old baby in her care. She gave several drops of tincture of laudanum to the infant. The nurse also gave a few drops to a 4-day-old infant, who recovered. The nurse “admitted that she gave the drops to the babies, in an effort to quiet them, because their cries made her nervous.”

I wonder if someone might have some information about the Bronx Women’s Maternity Hospital. It was located on the Grand Concourse & closed sometime after 1941. Now I’m going to give my age away. I was born there in that year. I was told by my parents that there was an epidemic of some sort and many of the newborns died. Apparently I did not.

Would anyone have any information or knowledge as to what that may have been?